Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Writing in “longhand” can be quite cumbersome, and has not advanced much in the last millennia. Text input on computing devices, such as the T9 system for cell phones, can greatly speed up text input by use of statistical knowledge of text, and explicit shortcuts, such as assigning abbreviations to represent longer phrases.
With the use of electronics, it has become possible to analyze pen movements, and to output images on surfaces such as paper. Some systems, such as pens with mechanical, optical or electrical motion tracking systems, are able to accurately track relative motion against a surface, such as a paper, but may less accurately track absolute position and motion, especially when such pens are not in contact with the surface. Some systems, such as pens with mechanical, optical or electrical motion tracking systems, are able to accurately track relative motion against a surface, such as a paper, but may less accurately track absolute position and motion, especially when such pens are not in contact with the surface.
Use of pens and pencils to take textual and graphical notes is very convenient and ubiquitous. Paper is available in many situations, such as homes, offices, restaurants, service desks, etc. However, it has historically been very inconvenient to transfer such notes into a digital form, usable by a computing system. Cameras in laptops and cellphones are often used to capture images of users and surrounding objects, but usually not a surface that a user is interacting with, such as a keyboard or a paper.
In general, computing systems such as personal computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, and cellular phones, among many other types of Internet-capable computing systems, are increasingly prevalent in numerous aspects of modern life. As computing systems become progressively more integrated with users' everyday life, the convenience, efficiency, and intuitiveness of the manner in which users interact with the computing systems becomes progressively more important.
Some recent attempts to improve the manner in which users interface with computing systems have involved use of a touch-based interface, perhaps in combination with one or more of the devices described above. While such touch-based interfaces are becoming increasingly prevalent, to date, techniques for interacting with such touch-based interfaces are often considered inconvenient, inefficient, and/or non-intuitive by users. An improvement is therefore desired.